Hands-on CTO / Principal Engineer (Java stack)
130k-160k + Equity
Flexible working policy
Albany Growth have partnered with a well-funded, mission-driven fintech startup is redefining how employees access and manage their finances. We're hiring for a hands-on technical leader (Principal Engineer / CTO), ideally proficient in JVM languages, to shape the next generation of its mobile and web platforms. This role combines strategic architectural ownership with deep technical involvement, giving you the chance to influence product direction while still writing code, setting standards, and solving complex technical challenges that power a high-growth consumer fintech product.
This role could suit a Principal Engineer with leadership qualities, a Head of Engineering looking to step up, or existing start-up CTO's who are still close to the code.
What you will be doing:
* Define and evolve a cross-platform architecture for mobile and web that is scalable, resilient and maintainable.
* Partner closely with Product, Design and commercial teams to turn ideas into production features — from inception through release and iteration.
* Stay hands-on: write prototypes and reference implementations, perform code reviews, and contribute code to critical systems when required.
* Lead architecture reviews, set engineering standards, and drive best practices in testing, CI/CD and observability.
* Mentor senior engineers and guide multiple squads working across mobile (iOS/React Native) and web (React/TypeScript).
* Make tooling, framework and platform decisions (cloud, infra, frameworks) that balance speed, cost and long-term scalability.
* Ensure appropriate attention to data privacy, security and regulatory requirements for a payments/embedded-finance environment.
Must-have skills & experience
* Proven experience as a hands-on technical leader (Principal Engineer, Head of Engineering, or CTO) in a product company or high-growth startup.
* Strong full-stack background with deep experience in Java / JVM (Spring Boot) and a demonstrable track record of shipping backend systems at scale.
* Significant experience building and scaling mobile and web user experiences (React, React Native, TypeScript, Swift or equivalent).
* Experience designing systems that serve large user bases (high concurrency, high throughput, resilient APIs).
* Strong cloud & platform experience (AWS or equivalent), CI/CD, and observability practices.
* Excellent communicator — able to translate technical trade-offs to product and non-technical stakeholders and win alignment.
* Comfortable operating across multiple teams and time zones; pragmatic, delivery-focused and customer-obsessed.
Why you’ll love it
* High impact: lead architecture for user-facing products with real business and social impact.
* Hands-on executive role: influence company strategy while continuing to code and ship.
* Remote-friendly, globally distributed teams with pockets of close collaboration: hybrid working and occasional travel supported.
* Equity at an early stage — meaningful ownership and influence on direction and outcomes.
This is a rare opportunity to combine strategic influence at the executive level with day-to-day engineering craftsmanship, owning end-to-end delivery of user-facing systems used by large numbers of customers.